Degrees of Veracity of Utterances (“to be honest”)

June 9, 2017

When a speaker makes a simple declarative statement, there is an implicit assurance in both the utterer’s and the interlocutor’s minds that it is veracious. If one wishes to make the assurance linguistically explicit, one can interpolate the phrase “to be honest” (which has its counterparts in European languages besides American English). This phrase has recently risen in frequency to be almost a verbal tic with certain speakers, especially those whose speech is recorded in the broadcast media.

The reason for this tic is not hard to find. The anomie surrounding public discourse––particularly in America, but not only––includes designations such as “post-truth,” “alt-truth,” etc., which have put participants and observers on the alert to the ever-present possibility of an utterance’s factitiousness, not to speak of its falsity. In such an environment, the addition of a phrase such as “to be honest” becomes almost mandatory, if one wishes to vouchsafe the truth of any utterance. A sorry state of affairs.